Tag: folk

The Top 100 Songs of 2014, Part One: 100 – 81

Posted on by David James Young in Lists

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We’re back once again with a retrospective on the year that was. Here are the 100 songs that made my year – not only the building blocks for my musical experiences, but my personal ones too. It’s been a pretty amazing time to be a music fan, as all of these songs will attest to.

Before you go any further, I compiled a supplementary playlist of 50 songs I really enjoyed in 2014 that just missed out on the top 100. You can stream it over at Spotify by either clicking here or streaming directly below:

Once again, I have to preface that you are completely allowed to not enjoy all of the songs on offer here. Or even any of them, for that matter. I do put it to you, however, that nothing here is “wrong” just because you’re not a fan of it personally or if something you do like doesn’t appear. If you feel so strongly, why not make a list of your own? I double dare you.

It begins…

– David James Young, December 2014

***

100. Corpus – Awash with Monotone

Feeling everything and nothing all at the same time. It’s truly one of the more difficult feelings to describe; leaving Sydney duo Corpus to enter the colour scheme and add a little synaesthesia to the mix of their cathartic, tense blend of third-wave post-hardcore and millennium-turn alt-rock. It projects a sense of distance and immediate proximity; of immeasurable loss and momentous gain. Not telling you all – and yet, in doing so, telling more than one might have ever suspected. “Awash with Monotone” is stuck in a moment – and, thanks to some masterful songcraft, it comes out alive.

99. Childish Gambino – Sober

Donald Glover is gonna just keep on doing Donald Glover. You get the feeling that he was going to be doing that anyway, regardless of whether anyone was listening or not. After ending out 2013 with because the internet, which folks either destroyed or called album of the year, the artist formerly known as Troy dropped both a mixtape and a new EP within immediate succession of one another. This end-of-summer rnb bliss release proved to be the pick of the litter, particularly when the pitch-shifted outro throws a smart, avant-garde curveball. Now we’re so high.

98. The Felice Brothers – Cherry Licorice

“I don’t care if it sounds ridic’lous!” sneers Ian Felice after announcing that the song’s title is all he’s interested in chewing on. Nor should he – as a matter of fact, “Cherry Licorice” could well be one of the most carefree songs of the year. Landing somewhere in the middle between Bob Dylan and Bright Eyes, there’s a simple joy to be had here: With its warm accordion and jangly guitar, the brothers offered up some particularly pleasant confectionery. Bonus points for rhyming ‘ladies and gents’ with ‘excrement,’ while we’re at it.

97. Die! Die! Die! – Get Hit

Two words. Six letters. An endless cycle of repetition. After awhile, “Get Hit” becomes more than a song title and a chorus – it’s a mantra; a cathartic cry out at those that are holding you back or holding you down. It exists on a vicious cycle, and there’s no getting off. Each snare roll sounds like a haymaker to the jaw, while Andrew Wilson laments over the ultra-violence with radiating guitar noise. The Dunedin natives have rarely sounded this dark, this brooding or this flat-out furious on record before. Furthermore, they’ve rarely sounded this good.

96. Chet Faker – Cigarettes and Loneliness

We all know what a love song sounds like. You’ve heard them on the radio, you’ve sung along to them… hell, you might have even written a couple yourself. This, conversely, is what a “love without love” song sounds like. Faker revels in his thinly-veiled non-chalance during the track’s verses before letting a bit of that heartbreak out as the song progresses – a little bit here and there, until he’s basically on his knees and openly mourning his failed, unrequited love without love. “Cigarettes and Loneliness” is the sound of a man falling apart.

95. Jacob feat. Luke Hughes – Floors

Much like Nicholas Cage, “Floors” is gone in 60 seconds. It does a lot more in that time, however, than Cage ever managed with that lousy remake of his. Odes to a life on the road are nothing new (what’s up, Willie Nelson?), but the vantage point of knowing that there’s always a show to be playing somewhere adds hope and a new perspective into the mix. Luke Hughes, frontman for the late, great Thesis, subsequently bowls the track over entirely with a roared refrain that is delivered with both love and hate. That’s touring for you.

94. Pixies – Snakes

If you asked “How many people thought the new Pixies album was terrible?” you’d get a raised hand from more or less everyone in the room. Were you to follow that up with “How many people actually heard the new Pixies album?,” however, the majority of those hands would be gone from the air. Yes, the proto-grunge legends somehow ended up as underdogs in 2014; but amid the backlash came this left-of-centre gem. Boasting some outstanding guitar work from Joey Santiago and some classic Black Francis weirdness, there was more to the Pixies 2.0 than met the eye.

93. Angus & Julia Stone – Heart Beats Slow

In their time away from the shared spotlight, both Angus and Julia released solo albums. While both had their merits, they also proved that there’s something truly special about their work together. The songwriting is stronger, the vocals tessellate brilliantly and the left knows exactly what the right is doing at all times. It’s as if they exist in a hive mind. It would certainly explain how a track like “Heart Beats Slow” comes so naturally to the siblings – with its drawn-out groove and reggae-tinged rhythm, it brought in the gentle breeze of familiarity and sent us sailing once again.

92. Broken Bells – After the Disco

10 years removed from The Grey Album, Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton is still finding new ways to push the proverbial envelope and challenge his listeners in his approach to both songwriting and production. Indeed, “After the Disco” almost sounds like one of his famed mash-ups – a dash of the Shins, a Chic beat, some prog-rock keys and a Queen bass-line. A potential mess, the song instead lets its colours run into something truly beautiful. What was initially thought to be a one-off between Burton and James Mercer back in 2010 has found life again – and what a life.

91. Passenger – Heart’s on Fire

It may be clear to all and sundry that a certain song stands as what pushed humble busker Mike Rosenberg into international superstar Passenger. The cracks certainly began to show, however, with this live favourite – often performed alongside Ed Sheeran and inevitably one of the more tender, beautiful moments of any Passenger set. Its premise is one that’s so simple, it could have come from anywhere – Cut Copy even attempted it several years prior with the apostrophe removed. That is, of course, until Rosenberg begins to sing. It’s clear, then, that it came from the heart. Directly.

90. Angus & Julia Stone – A Heartbreak

The Stones are often classified under the banner of folk rock, but it’s rare that a song of theirs is able to be considered as more of the latter than the former. That’s where “A Heartbreak” emerges, here serving as both the opening number to their self-titled third LP and a potential mission statement. The song is simply resplendent in its aphotic corners, muted guitars and stomping drums. The blunt yet understated lyrical content further indulges the two in their collective darkside – at the very least, they indicate that we’re not on that big jet plane anymore.

89. La Roux – Kiss and Not Tell

Elly Jackson arrived late in the game of the 2000s – figuratively within its final months – but was there just in time to drop in classics of the decade such as “In For the Kill” and “Bulletproof.” There weren’t any new classics to be found on La Roux’s second album, but there didn’t need to be. Honestly, Jackson simply sounded happy to be back making music under the moniker again. Here, she further immerses herself in synth-pop with flourishes of early Depeche Mode, a pinch of ABC and some classic La Roux ambiguity. It feels like home once again.

88. Ed Sheeran – Don’t

The second single from Sheeran’s chart-smashing x (say it “multiply”) raised a lot of questions to a lot of different people. “Is it about Taylor?” openly pondered the screaming teenage girls that make up a fair slice of the pie chart detailing his demographic. “Is it about Ellie?” tweeted the twenty-somethings supposedly above teen fandom and yet unable to help themselves in a little gossip. The most important question came, though, from true pop afficionados: “Exactly what more will it take to prove that this kid isn’t fucking around?” A career-best single from a career that is still yet blooming.

87. Hockey Dad – Beach House

The term “sports-montage rock” is often used as derogatory slang for lifeless, paint-by-numbers music that blends into the background of tackling, goal-scoring and cheering footage. This is only being brought up to preface something that must be said without any intent to insult: “Beach House” needs to be incorporated into a skate video and it needs to be done post-haste. This scorcher is a blend of Vampire Weekend hooks (“Ay! Ay! Ay!”), Wavves guitar tone and bounding, youthful exuberance. Oh, and it would be totes wicked rad if there were some kickflips to go with it.

86. Postblue – Pig

Kids have seemingly always been in bands that ape the musical stylings of a movement they either weren’t alive for or are far too young to remember directly. This, of course, doesn’t mean that those acts should be directly dismissed – it’s not the influences, per se, but what a band does with them. In regards to Melbourne-via-Byron’s Postblue, it means taking the definitive traits of the grunge era – snarling vocals, Big Muff pedal stomps and smart loud-quiet-loud dynamics – and wheezing some fresh air into them. It’s been done, sure, but right now no-one’s doing it better.

85. Latham’s Grip – Anyone Else

Anyone who’s been in a rock band can attest to that unbeatable moment where an instrumental break is being jammed upon, the eyes connect around the room and, without a word being said, it just keeps on going. That’s a huge part of “Anyone Else,” and it makes the song all that much stronger. Where many bands would cut off, Latham’s Grip push until they get through to the other side. It works wonders on what’s already an exceptional cut of garage-dwelling alt-rock. “All I’ve got is who I am,” laments vocalist Jesse Hepplewhite at one point. Sometimes, that’s more than enough.

84. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah feat. Matt Berninger – Coming Down

Where did we lose Alec Ounsworth? The foundations of the little Brooklyn band that could came crumbling sometime after 2007’s Some Loud Thunder, but its leader never gave up hope – even when figuratively the entire band left. The road to redemption begins here, with what is easily the project’s strongest single since “Satan Said Dance.” A buzzing rhythm section matches up with churning post-punk guitar as Ounsworth pours his peculiar brand of paranoia over the top. Later, The National’s Matt Berninger turns up to offer an even gloomier viewpoint; and the class of 2005 lives on somehow.

83. Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk

Mark Ronson rocking up all non-chalantly with a single in November is basically like that Bill Murray cameo in Space Jam – you didn’t see it coming and it took most of the run-time to actually happen, but it’s what you’re going to remember it for. Along for the ride is your boy Bruno Mars – once a fedora-tipping lovesick puppy, now a swagged-out smooth operator calling the shots. “Uptown Funk” is Prince, it’s Sly and the Family Stone and it’s James Brown, but there’s something more important about it. It’s the trumpets sounding the return of the king.

82. FKA twigs – Two Weeks

This ain’t no Grizzly Bear cover. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around. Over a dizzying, clattered trap beat, twigs approaches her lover in the song’s lyrics with all the subtlety and nuance of a Prince record – the mix makes it feel as though she’s practically singing directly into his ear and we’re eavesdroppers. Who’d have guessed that an ode to stoned, bestial sex would wind up as one of the sexiest-sounding songs of the year? FKA twigs has rightfully emerged atop the throne after some promising leadups to her debut. Your move, motherfuckers.

81. Röyksopp & Robyn – Sayit

Scandinavians having sex with robots? Sure, why not. An adults-only sequel to the pairing’s original collaboration, 2007’s “Girl and the Robot,” things get decidedly hot and heavy this time around – even with a strictly limited amount of words actually being spoken. It’s all in the beat – hammering, propulsive and incessant; mercilessly pounding away on the bass drum to ensure there’s not a single second across the five-minute runtime when you’re not a sweaty, dancing mess. If ever you needed proof that these three are a match made in Heaven, here it is. Let’s get freaky.

***

80 – 61

INTERVIEW: Jae Laffer (AUS), September 2013

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews


This was the first feature that I wrote for the BRAG, and there’s many happy returns where that came from. So far, I’ve done dozens of features for them; including seven cover stories that I’m really happy with. Obviously, we’ll get to them before you know it. Let’s get back to this, as I had a chat with the perfectly charming frontman of The Panics. Seriously underrated band if you ask me – even if, for many, they live and die by that song. This was in promotion of his perfectly charming solo album. Painless interview. Good one to start with for a place I’m still very proud and happy to be writing for.

– DJY, December 2014

***

2013 not only marks the release of Jae Laffer’s debut solo album, it also marks a milestone of ten years since the release of A House on a Street in a Town I’m From, the debut album from Laffer’s day job, The Panics. Jae exudes a sense of pride at what the band achieved – particularly at such an early age.

“It reminds me of that time in your life when you’re waking up out of being a dreamer in high school,” he says. “I listen to that album and I hear myself crazily imitating all of my heroes. It’s so exciting, though – and when it starts catching on, it’s the most invigorating feeling. There’s a great energy, and that’s the great thing about the kind of music you make when you’re in your teens – it’s naïve, but it’s not afraid of anything.”

The Panics have been on an extended break following the release of their 2011 album Rain on the Humming Wire. In that time, Laffer has been hard at work on When the Iron Glows Red – an earnest slice of folk-rock full of warm harmonies, strident acoustic guitar and a new-found sense of purpose. Laffer felt that Iron was an album that he had to make.

“I just wanted to test the waters,” he explains. “I’ve gotten to the stage where the band and I want to change up what we do and start afresh. We’re still very close, but I also wanted to keep up creativity on all fronts.”

“I felt it was a good time to do this album,” he continues. “After the last Panics album took a little longer than we wanted, it certainly had its particular stresses here and there. All I really wanted to do before starting on any new Panics stuff was just to show myself that I could create an atmosphere, write a whole bunch of songs really quickly and record them. For many years of compromising, it just felt great to be freely creative for creativity’s sake and take control of a record – produce it, play most of the stuff on it. It just felt good, and it worked.”

Laffer points to two iconic figures – John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen – as being greatly influential on the sound of Iron. “I think a lot of what I was listening to was reflecting being thirty years old and having new kinds of pressures in life,” he says. “It’s that struggle of trying to keep our dreams alive and not compromising too much, not letting things stop you from being your true self. So I found myself really relating to the worker’s ballads of Springsteen and Lennon crazily talking so abruptly about his relationship. I might not be up there with those guys, but it’s just that kind of feeling that resonated with me.”

The album will be launched with a national tour, starting in mid-October in Melbourne and winding up with a Sydney date in early November. Laffer will be joined by a four-piece backing band, and promises a mix of new solo material and some Panics favourites. Don’t worry about backlash should you request ‘Don’t Fight It,’ either – against all odds, Jae is at peace with The Panics’ biggest single.

“It’s just a cool song,” he says calmly. “As far as having a track that sums you up to people, then I feel ‘Don’t Fight It’ puts our reputation in good hands. It’s got a certain something to it… I’ll always be proud of it.”

INTERVIEW: Paul McDermott (AUS), April 2013

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

A bit like the Patience Hodgson interview, this was a challenge insofar as I had to interview someone very well known for one thing about something else. I really enjoyed that aspect of it, however – Paul was a wonderful guy to interview. He’s someone that I grew up watching, so it was borderline surreal to be able to speak one-on-one with someone I’d come to love and respect over fifteen years. Another feature where I genuinely think it’s one of the better ones I’ve done.

– DJY, October 2014

***

If there’s two things you can instantly remember about Paul McDermott – his ultimate distinguishing features, if you will – it’s that he’s one of Australia’s all-time great funnymen and he’s got a tremendous set of pipes. After roughly thirty years of focusing primarily on the former, McDermott’s new stage show, simply titled Paul Sings, brings attention to the latter in its first proper outing. For the first time ever, Paul has put together a show of all-original material, ranging from the confessional “Bottle” to the love-lorn “Slow Ride Home.” With all of this in mind, one would think that singing had been a part of McDermott’s life from the very beginning. He is, however, quick to point out that it was never really a part of his life until he formed the infamous Doug Anthony All-Stars alongside Tim Ferguson and Richard Fidler.

“I’ve always sung to myself,” he says, on the line from Melbourne in the middle of a busy week at the Comedy Festival. “As a kid, I remember just singing to myself and singing at church with my mother. There was nothing at school, though – I wasn’t part of the choir, I never learned an instrument. I didn’t really start singing publicly until I joined up with the All-Stars, and we started busking. I never thought singing as a career was a reality in any way, so it was quite a weird set of circumstances that lead to it.”

The rest, as they say, is history. After 10 years with the All-Stars, McDermott moved onto hosting Good News Week in both its original 90s run and its 2000s revival; as well as Triple J breakfast hosting alongside longtime collaborator Mikey Robins. He formed GUD alongside notable Australian musicians Mick Moriaty (The Gadflys) and Cameron Bruce (Paul Kelly, Washington, Club Luna Band); who had a substantial run at festivals and the like throughout the first half of the 2000s. On the ABC, he also hosted The Sideshow, a variety/cabaret program which ran for one season in 2007 before unfortunately being cancelled. One thing that did come from The Sideshow of particular note was a slab of original songs, written and performed by McDermott near the end of the episode. With this in mind, it’s easy to imagine the daunting task of putting together the setlist for these shows, narrowing down a myriad of material over the years down to just 90 minutes’ worth.

“It’s been an interest process,” he admits. “With this show, we’ve just been trying to narrow it down to the sweet songs. We used to do this thing in the All-Stars when about three-quarters of the way through the show, we’d do a song like “[Heard It Through the] Grapevine,” “Throw Your Arms Around Me” or “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” They were always used as a counterpoint to the more visceral, grotesque comedy that we were doing. They affected people in a different way. This show is like a collection of those ideas, but they’re all original songs – songs that came from the end of The Sideshow, songs that were occasionally put in Good News Week or GNW Night Lite, or even songs that were in the [Comedy Festival] Debates. It’s taken us awhile to collect them, and we’ve only really found about half of them!”

Given that Paul Sings is a notably more sincere and – dare it be said – “serious” show in comparison to previous McDermott productions, the question must be asked: Is it difficult for people to keep a straight face at a comedy festival show? “The reaction has been quite phenomenal, really,” says Paul in response. “The reaction to the songs has been great. I do get to chat a bit with the audience between the songs – I guess that could be considered comedy. I think we strike a good balance, overall. People have been very complimentary about this show, which is really nice.”

Despite the title of Paul Sings, McDermott is also very quick to point out that he’s definitely not alone on this venture. Joining him will be a four-piece backing band, of whom he cannot speak high enough praises. On bass is Thirsty Merc alumni Phil Stack, who Paul describes as “the missing piece – his vocals are just perfect, and he has such great ideas.” On drums is Evan Mannell (“I’ve been calling him the Bison – he hits those skins like he hates them!”); and the two are joined by guitarist Patch Brown (“I don’t know why he isn’t the biggest thing in the world yet – he’s a superstar!”) and keyboard/accordion player Stu Hunter (“He’s done such wonderful things with these arrangements, what a brilliant musician!”).

There’s an overwhelming sense of pride in McDermott’s tone when he discusses how Paul Sings has come together – it’s already received rave reviews at the Fringe in Paul’s hometown of Adelaide, as well as the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In two weeks, the show will come to the Sydney Comedy Festival for two nights only, at The Concourse in Chatswood and the Enmore Theatre in Newtown. McDermott himself is particularly fond of the latter – “Oh, I haven’t played there in a thousand years!” he reminisces. “What a beautiful venue. We can’t wait to come and play.”

Oh, one last thing, Paul: Any chance of an encore of “I Fuck Dogs”?

“People are ALWAYS after that particular classic,” he says with a laugh.

INTERVIEW: Passenger (UK), February 2011

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

I can honestly say that of every artist to completely explode on a global scale of the past few years, no-one has deserved it more than Mike Rosenberg. All the dude has ever had is a guitar and some dreams. Now he’s playing arenas. How many people get to say that? Like, make what you will of the guy’s music. It’s not for everyone – or, maybe, some people don’t like it because it is for everyone. Whatever the case, you’ve got to hand it to the guy for his goddamn hustle. I’ll always love Mike, and interviews like this are one of the many reasons why.

– DJY, October 2014

***

Mike Rosenberg doesn’t do interviews. This isn’t to imply that he is stuck up or pretentious or anything of the sort. Rather, when Rosenberg – better known to most as Passenger – is scheduled to do these “interview” things, he throws that idea out the window and engages you in conversation. None of this I’m-an-artist pedestal – Mike, an expat Brit who now spends most of his time in our fair country, is just an ordinary guy who just happens to make extraordinary music.

“I’ve been pretty busy, man,” he says when it comes to his work as Passenger. “Lot of touring last year -did shows with Boy & Bear and then my own tour, which was cool. I did Woodford [Folk Festival] in the new year, did some shows with Josh Pyke, lots of busking, writing, recording…just smashing it, man. It’s been good fun, though!”

Perhaps it’s this level of activity and productivity that has kept Passenger’s profile growing at an exponential rate. Additionally, perhaps it’s his warm and friendly nature that has seen him buddy up with some of Australian music’s biggest names on his second studio album, Flight of the Crow. Every single song is a collaboration with another act – from Philadelphia Grand Jury to Dead Letter Chorus, from Katie Noonan to Kate Miller-Heidke, Matt Corby, Lior, touring buddies Josh Pyke and Boy and Bear… it just goes on like this. Sure, he’s probably been asked a thousand times over but how exactly does one go about making such fast friends?

“Well, I paid a lot of people a lot of money, and I threatened to kidnap as well,” says Rosenberg, his tongue lodged firmly within cheek. “Really, though, dude, it was just one of those things. I knew Lior and Josh through mutual friends, I met Boy & Bear and Matt at a gig. This is the honest truth – it was a really fucking organic process. I haven’t got a label, I’m not signed to anyone, it wasn’t some big PR stunt where we came in with hundreds and thousands of dollars. It was literally just an idea that came about and just went from strength to strength. I was just lucky enough that people with such talent got involved and were so open to being involved with a project like that.”

Much has also been made of the context in which Flight was recorded, too – Rosenberg funded the entire recording process with money made from his extensive busking, something he still does every other week wherever he can. “The reason I did that was for the music – there was no other reason,” he comments. “I think people responded to that. If it had been from any other place, I don’t think it would have been as successful. It all took awhile, a few months or so. The upside of doing something like that, though, is that you’ve got no-one to tell you what songs go on or what should be on the cover or any of that kind of stuff. All that hard work is really paying for creative freedom – and, to me, that’s the most important thing.”

What advice does Rosenberg have for any young buskers who wish to follow in his footsteps and try the same thing? His answer is simple: “Fucking go for it, man!” He continues: “It can make you feel pretty weird, but it’s such a good way of improving -playing-wise, as well as learning to perform in front of people. You’ve got to develop a thick skin, you really do – but it’s so good for you. In music, there’s so many fucking knock-backs and set-backs, you get excited about something and then it falls through. In a really funny way, busking kind of hardens you up. It helps you to deal with that side of things.”

Only a matter of months after finishing his own headlining tour, Mike is back on the road once more this month for the One For The Road tour, co-headlining with his friend Ohad Rein – better known as Old Man River. “He was a guy that I had recommended to me when I was making Flight of the Crow,” recalls Mike on how he and Rein first met. “I’d heard his name thrown around a lot, and I’d heard his music and really liked it, but we’d never had a chance to hang out. It turned out that he has the same booking agent as me, so we met up a bunch of times and it seemed like a really good idea. He wanted to go out with just an acoustic guitar, and I said that was my kind of thing and it just went from there. Too easy!”

INTERVIEW: Seeker Lover Keeper (AUS), July 2011

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

In 2011, I saw Seeker Lover Keeper five times. I also met all three of them and welled up like an infant. It was three of my heroes from the class of 2004 (go check out all of their releases from that year and thank me later) making remarkably beautiful music together. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. I get really happy when I think about that time in my life – I was super-close to finishing uni, I felt like I was getting somewhere with my writing and I had this goddamn album! So yeah, I spoke to Sarah Blasko and despite seeing all three of these women in public several times since I have never had the guts to go speak to any of them again. I’d probably bore them to death, anyway.

– DJY, October 2014

***

Anyone can dream up a supergroup, but it’s very rare that these fantasies actually come to fruition. It’s also very rare to see it happen of late outside the field of big, burly rock – anyone for Chickenfoot or Hellyeah? It’s interesting that it’s taken something as left-field and unexpected as Seeker Lover Keeper to break this mould. The collaboration between Sarah Blasko, Holly Throsby and Sally Seltmann was first brought to wider attention upon their announcement as a part of the 2011 Splendour in the Grass festival, but the idea of uniting three of Australia’s finest voices has been in the works for quite some time.

“I think I saw Holly play live first – we had a common manager at the time,” says Blasko when asked to recall the origins of her friendship between her counterparts. “Sally, I remember hearing on the radio for the first time and really loving her music – that would have been around the time of her first album. After seeing each other around all the time, I guess it was natural that our friendship developed. We’ve all got a lot in common, and have the same kind of sense of humour. I guess it was only a matter of time.”

It was after a show that Seltmann showed the other two a song she had been working on entitled Rest Your Head On My Shoulder, which would go on to become the final track on the SLK album. “That was really the turning point,” recalls Blasko, “where we all genuinely wanted it to happen. Sally came up with the name, and we scheduled to record not long after all of that.” Considering that Blasko’s last album, As Day Follows Night, was recorded across a month in Stockholm, it certainly came as a notable change to record Seeker Lover Keeper in New York across a fortnight.

“We all wanted to have a really different experience from the last time we all recorded albums,” says Blasko. “We kind of set ourselves a few parameters for this record. We wanted it to be recorded in a really large way. The harmonies, the base of the sound, we just wanted it all to be really natural, really organic. We decided very early on that we wanted it all to be very simple. Kind of like a folk album – I mean, it’s obviously got other elements in there as well, but our sole intention was just to create a simple, beautiful album.”

Mission accomplished. Seeker Lover Keeper is an album of cohesive musicianship, strikingly honest lyrics and kind of freeze-in-tracks, jaw-on-floor close harmony that would normally only come through shared bloodlines. Blasko is particularly enthusiastic about just how liberating it felt to be singing alongside these women, describing it as a “really wonderful” experience. “I think probably the last time I ever really sang like this, in this way, is with my sister when I was really young,” she adds. “In a way, all three of us kind of become children again when we start singing together. It’s a really special, pure thing to do. All of us have had harmonies on our records before – Sally, especially – but I guess we’ve never really had the means to properly replicate our harmonies live. It’s been so fun rehearsing these songs, and finally being able to do it like this.”

Another interesting aspect of Seeker Lover Keeper was its songwriting process. Rather than simply penning songs for themselves to sing, each of the three women wrote songs for the others to sing. Blasko, who sings the most lead vocals out of the three, says that although it was certainly a challenge, the end result was more than rewarding. “I’ve often enjoyed doing covers and things like that,” she comments. “When you sing someone else’s words, you have to put yourself into their mind a bit. You have to draw on your own experience, but you’re struck by these words that you wouldn’t say yourself. It really makes you pay attention to the way it’s been constructed. To me, it was a real pleasure to sing those songs.”

With the role reversed, Blasko emphasises just how amazed she was with what Throsby and Seltmann did with her songs. “It’s really quite amazing to see your songs take on a different meaning when they’re in someone else’s hands,” Sarah notes. “People just have different inflections, different ways of saying the one thing. Hearing Sally do On My Own, I thought she just sounded so sweet and so pure. It was really lovely to hear it done so differently.”

The songs will be brought to life on the band’s first ever tour, extensively taking in most of the east coast of Australia. With Dirty Three drummer Jim White at the helm, Blasko is really excited to be performing songs from the album, as well as each other’s songs. “We’ll definitely throw in a few of our own,” she promises. “It’s going to be really special.”

INTERVIEW: Jen Cloher (AUS), November 2008

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

Funny that I’m revisiting this literally a day after seeing the lady in question live once again. I’ve known Jen for years, and I count her as both a friend and a great inspiration. This interview more or less started that, although we’d briefly met once before in 2007 at a festival featuring Xavier Rudd, Ash Grunwald and The Audreys. Man, what a time hey? Roots takeover! This interview came prior to the release of Jen’s second studio album, Hidden Hands, which was one of my favourite LPs of 2009. She doesn’t turn out records often, but when she does… look out, son. Them’s some hot rekkids.

This was one of my favourite interviews from around this time – more for what ended up on the cutting room floor, interestingly enough. We were supposed to have a 15-minute interview and we just ended up chatting for a good 30 minutes. She’s just such a warm and interesting person, and I can never be in a bad mood when I’m listening to her music or seeing her live. We’re fortunate to have women like this around, folks. Anyway, enough from me. Let’s read on…

– DJY, July 2013

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Over the past couple of months, a familiar face has re-entered the collective conscience of Australian music after a momentary lapse into obscurity. For a while, nobody knew where Jen Cloher or her band, the Endless Sea, had gotten to. “I know, right?” the woman herself laughs. “People have been like, – ‘What happened to Jen Cloher? First she was touring and doing shows and then… she wasn’t!’”

The truth of the matter is that there is no big rock star meltdown story, or even in-band fighting. Jen simply took some time away from the limelight to visit her parents. “My parents moved back to New Zealand about fifteen years ago when Mum got work here – they’re Kiwis originally,” she explains. “I made the decision to spend some quality time with them and help out where I could.” Whilst in New Zealand, Jen also came to write the bulk of what would become the Endless Sea’s second album, Hidden Hands. The album’s title – from Cloher’s point of view at least – “sounds a little sinister.” There’s a lot more to it than that, however. “It’s based on a quote by Joseph Campbell, this amazing mythologist. – ‘Follow your bliss, do whatever you are meant to do on this planet. Doors will open where there were no doors before, and you will be lead by a thousand unseen helping hands.’ I love the idea that there are forces beyond what we can see that will help us on our quest.”

Recorded at Woodstock Studios in St. Kilda – which was, up until recently, owned by Joe Camilleri of Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons – Hidden Hands was swiftly recorded live over a period of seven days. The band chose once again to work with engineer Paul McKercher, who has also worked with artists like Sarah Blasko and Augie March. “We worked with him again because we were really happy with his work on the first album,” says Cloher. It is also interesting to note that Cloher herself, as well as singer-songwriter/touring partner Laura Jean, undertook the album’s production duties. “She’s a really great musician,” Jen enthuses. “I’ve stolen her to play some piano and sing, as an honorary member of the Endless Sea.”

Jean’s inclusion in the Endless Sea is one of three new additions to the Endless Sea line-up, which now tallies up as a septuplet. The others are Biddy Connor, a viola/musical saw player who also performs as part of Laura Jean’s Eden Land Band, and Tom Healy, a guitarist that Cloher met during her time in New Zealand. So what’s changed this time around for Cloher’s music? “The differences between the first and second albums are worlds apart,” she says emphatically. Elaborating on this statement leads Cloher to compare and contrast her two works back to back. “Our last album (2006’s ARIA-nominated Dead Wood Falls) was kind of based around lovelorn characters, and it had a distant romantic, blurred-around-the-edges kind of thing about it. It was very much your singer-songwriter album. You could hear that these were songs that I’d written by myself in my bedroom.” And now? “This record is much more of a ‘band’ album because we really developed our own sound a lot with all the touring that we did. When I was writing these songs, I was very conscious that I was writing these songs to a band’s strength.”

Conversation moves to what Jen was writing about during her time in New Zealand. “It’s not about romantic love or lost love. It’s about…” She takes a moment to attempt a vivid description, but shrugs and jokingly comes up with, “…big stuff”. By ‘big stuff,’ of course, Cloher means “mortality, relationships, family, friends, creativity… Really, when I was writing the album, I thought that the most important thing was that these songs were true to me right now.” With this in mind, it must be asked if there is a song that means the most to Cloher out of her sophomore batch. After a moment of thinking out loud (“They all are, so much,” she sighs), she chooses a song called Watch Me Disappear. Written about her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease, she says that the song deals with watching someone very close to you succumb to the illness. “It’s death itself,” Cloher states. “It’s watching someone lose their memory, their concept of time… it’s a really weird disease.”

Certainly, even with a fuller and more realised band sound, this is the sound of a singer-songwriter tacking very personal yet universal issues. If you haven’t yet already, don’t miss an opportunity to bear witness to two of contemporary Australian music’s most formidable talents and hear the beginning stages of what is certain to be a popular release of 2009, Hidden Hands.